Maya Tips 03-FK or IK, What's the difference

Still reeling in from the death of my MSI monitor but fortunately with the prevalence of the internet and Online Shopping, I can get a replacement 27" 165hz Monitor sometime in February since I don't want to pay those high prices at places like Best Buy, Walmart, or London Drugs.

As of now, I've bought an ASUS TUF GAMING VG27AQ monitor....

but that's not important.

Let's get back into topic: FK AND IK.

As you haven't known about me, When I started experimenting with CG Animation, my knowledge was limited due to cheap hardware and a cheap open-source software.

But once I got my nearly $50,000 art school education, I broadened my mind to how it's really done in the industry using powerful software tailored to studio quality 3D Stuff.

During my Second year, I was introduced to a term I never heard in my life but is rather important in the realm of 3D Animation.

Those were FK and IK.

But what the hell are they?

Well let's truncate them into an individual description for each tool

First is FK which is short for FORWARD KINEMATICS.

This is the term to describe joints having an individual control for each limb. The furthest the control is to the torso or abdomen, the more dominant the limb control is since the dominant bones in a 3D Rig is always closest to the COG(Center of Gravity) control.

It may seem robotic to newcomers but once you get the hand of acting with FK, then it's a cinch. 

So what is FK primarily used for?

Mostly for Hand and arm gestures. Kind of like the hand gestures you see on a lot of Disney Films from old.

Brer Rabbit here will demonstrate Forward Kinematic hand gestures:

"Stop hypnotizing me with those FK Arms you stupid rabbit!"

"It ain't my fault! The guy with the Razer Mechanical Keyboard wants me to demonstrate acting in 3D Animation tools."

It's also the same gesture system used by David Murray from THE 8-BIT GUY on YouTube.

So in a sense, It's sort of overlapping action when you look at it.

Another great example of FK being used is for when you need to animate a hand action like Ren slapping Stimpy silly as shown below.

Or for when you need to animate a character kicking a Football or Soccer Ball.

IK just won't work your rounds that way so FK is good for animating an overlapping action of a kick.

Speaking of feet, FK is seldom used for the feet since like in real life, they need to stay on the ground or make things easier for the animator to animate a walk cycle or even in this case, place the foot on stationary objects like a box.

So IK is used for the feet but IK is not limited only to the feet.

What is IK?

Well that's INVERSE KINEMATICS.

This is a term to describe a dominant action that's dictated by hand, foot, or limb the follows the control of that rig.

It’s also used to hold a hand placement on something like a desk.

Just ask this pissed off Lion below.

Had the Lion's hand been animated on FK, his fist would clip through the Table but IK keeps his fist steady with barely any movement.

Of course, you still might need to animate slight rotations on the wrist or finger animations since the fist or a palm on the table is not always still, even when on IK.

But how does the elbow react? 

Well if you see your rig with IK arms or legs with IK set, you’ll see these controls called pole vectors. These determine the direction of the elbows. Sometimes they need to be manually animated or they are automatically animated via being set to follow the hand but even then, it still might need to be animated due to issues with movements and sticking to realistic acting. 

Alternatively IK can be used allow the hand to remain at a certain angle or pose that can't be done with FK alone such as this gesture of THE IRON GIANT holding Hogarth or any scene of the giant picking up or putting down Hogarth.

IK is somewhat popular with studios like Sony Pictures or Illumination since it allows the animator to have a character hold a sullen pose with their hands below the character's head but I don't have a screenshot from Hotel Transylvania or Despicable Me so I'm going to be cryptic about this.

IK is also used for animating a character lifting a very heavy weight such as this poor shmuck shown below struggling to lift a heavy iron ball.

Or when you animate someone eavesdropping:

Or when you need to hang on to something:

And yes, this includes holding things with bottom weight.....

or as in the case with Brer Fox, holding a rabbit by the ears:

"I told you to stop cahooting with the Razer Guy!!! I'm feeding you to the wolves!!!"

Which is better for you? FK or IK?

There's no definitive answer. Both FK and IK are used together to create your animations.

What really matters is having to take advantage of how to switch from FK to IK and vice versa.

Sometimes you can just alternate and spline the switch tangents on your Graph Editor when switching FK/IK controls but other times, you can't rely on splined tangents alone so you have to rely on locators to help pinpoint where you hand and elbow gestures connect to make a seamless change.

Believe it or not, The Locator Method is my least favorite but I have no choice since there are rigs like Jasper that don't follow the splined tangent rule for FK/IK switches.

This method involves creating several locators and then matching the translate and rotation values to these locators. It's tedious but it's surprisingly helpful.

My most preferred method is to go to my GRAPH EDITOR on MAYA, find the FK/IK keyframe if I Keyed it, set the switched key tangents to splined, set the keyframes further apart to let the switch feel seamless, and there you go.

Below is a piece of animation I did back in college that dives into the FK/IK switch realm in pantomime animation.

Pay attention to Malcom's hand. Tell me what is his FK hand or IK hand.

Maya Tips is far from over. I have more tidbits that warrant the title of MAYA TIPS but until I get my bearings and knowledge from my College years, consider this post closed.

But yeah, FK and IK switches is a must for 3D Animation.

Maya Tips 02-Vowels

Now comes the most sought part of Maya Tips: Vowels.

After doing the anime mouths on my Maya Rigs, It's time to animate the vowels for my characters.

This involves a process of checking to see how the jaw animation is going with my animations before I proceed on to animating the side parts of the mouth.

This involves scrubbing through my timeline where I have my audio file and playing back the timeline to see how the scene is going.

Once I'm satisfied with how the animation of the jaw is going with the audio waveforms, I proceed to select the side portions of the mouths.

But before I start animating, I need to make sure the control axis is set to object for both controls so that way, the mouths are animated in symmetrical form unless I need specific mouth poses but before that, I need to focus on animating the vowels.

I've noticed that some rigs have their side mouth controls thrown off the axis and don't follow symmetry rules so I have to pre-key their keyframes before I animate.

I can't do screenshots and show you how to pull the control with your mouse so instead, I'll show you mouth variations of what the vowels will look like when working on the vowel controls.

Unlike on 2D Puppet Rigs where the mouth animations are pre-set, 3D Character Rigs let you decide whether you want subtle or exaggerated mouth poses, just as long as they don't break the polygons and by that, CLIP THROUGHT THE POLYGONS.

Also, some rigs are built different to the point they can exaggerate their jaw poses too.

Kayla and her male counterpart Kyle for me are notoriously constrained POLYGON-WISE when I want to exaggerate their jaws or mouth poses but Jasper is an exception.

I'm glad I'm using an updated version of the Jasper Rig. I had an earlier version that was notoriously broken on the jaw controls..... sort of.

Below is an earlier version of this scene I made where I used the original broken Jasper rig.

How broken was he? Well for some reason which you can't see, his hands were linked to his jaw controls that reacted so I had to hide that by using a CINEMASCOPE lenses in this earlier version.

Thank balls the rig is fixed but for the sake of authenticity, I set the new version of this animation's camera to CINEMASCOPE resolution since I'm a fan of scope lenses like the ones used in STAR WARS.

Also, It's a good idea to check your graph editor to see how your keyframes are holding up.

Next installment of Maya Tips, I want to get into the nuts and bolts of FK/IK switches but that will have to wait until I work more on this animation and get my necessary screenshots.

It feels weird doing this but my CHADLY 27" MSI 165hz Monitor is totally busted.

I thought the horizontal lines went away but then they came back and in worse condition than before so now I'm back to square one which is my smaller 24" ACER Monitor..... for a short time though.

Funny how my larger monitors broke down more easily while my smaller ACER monitor which I've had for the last 2 years proved to be more reliable.

I bought an ASUS TUF GAMING VG27AQ monitor which has sort of the same specs as my old MSI Monitor but it has things like 1440p resolution and HDR colors.

The refresh however is slightly lower at 144hz and I disabled HDR Colors because the were too bright for my eyes despite having perfect 20/20 vision.

Warhol Caricatures

I was browsing through my photos in my USB drives where I came across this:

With the still ongoing animation rut in North America which I still blame it all on executives, I figure until something changes, why not do something to ease the struggles. 

So Caricatures it is. Those drawings up there are of artist ANDY WARHOL.

I don't know why I'm obsessed with Warhol recently but just want to point out some things with these caricatures since I figure that instead of drawing the same damn things you see from other artists or influences, it's about time you enter the realm of caricatures where you experiment with trying to draw semi-realistically or exaggerate the realism.

These caricatures will not be done digitally like I'd prefer. A real caricature should be done on pencil and paper.

I usually prefer to do my art digitally but only for my own art. Caricatures just don't belong to the realm of the digital realm, especially with that Generative AI bullshit still being enforced in these software packages regardless if it's open source or not.

And to real sell the deal that my caricatures will be all pencil and paper, I will not edit the photos or scans aside from cropping the images. Real Physical Art deserves all that raw light source. 

I will slip up just this once for Warhol still having my MAVERICK Art style but next caricatures will further deviate away from my art for authenticities sake.

Yes, that vertical line on his chin is his cleft chin even though the rough pencil drawing makes it look like he stole Kirk Douglas' chin hole cleft.

Maverick Quickie-My MSI Monitor crapped out... sort of

I never thought it was going to happen but it did.

My 27" 165hz MSI G2712 Gaming Monitor has officially crapped out on me.

It still works but I still consider it dead since there's this weird horizontal pixel crap appearing on the bottom of my screen.

ACK!!! It really burns me up that this happened to my monitor of all things.

I'm not without a monitor as I still have my Acer QG241Y Monitor which is a little older than my MSI monitor but at least it doesn't have that weird horizontal pixel pattern.

The only problem is that it's a smaller 24" Monitor with a max refresh of 75hz. It also has no DisplayPort. Only HDMI and VGA.

That's a major problem since my RTX 4080 GPU has 3 DisplayPort's but only 1 HDMI port and I have more HDMI Devices than DisplayPort Devices so I feel like a compressed vice like this.

I'm currently browsing options to replace my MSI Monitor with a new monitor. Preferably from Asus or Dell and with a higher resolution than the MSI Monitor was.

My MSI Monitor had a max resolution of 1920x1080 resolution but I figure a higher resolution would be better.

I'd rather have a 4K Monitor but if I can't find one in the price range I'm looking for, I guess the next higher resolution I could go for is a 1440p Monitor.

Update as of February 2024:

I've bought a new 1440p ASUS TUF Monitor so that effectively replaced my MSI monitor.

Hazbin Hotel's hiding an animation software cel secret that makes me very intrigued

HAZBIN HOTEL's just been released to AMAZON PRIME recently as of January 18 2024.

Yeah Yeah, it's a Modern Show that probably uses that same CALARTS STYLE acting that drives me nuts but I think HAZBIN HOTEL really does have potential.

I haven't watched it yet but I'm paying for AMAZON PRIME so I have all the free time to watch it..... when I'm not at work that is.

Anyway, this is not a review of HAZBIN HOTEL since I have yet to watch it but I was looking at screenshots that are on it's IMDB page and I noticed something that I've been experimenting with on Toon Boom Harmony Premium which is the software I use for 2D Animation.

It's hard to see but I see a faint drop shadow on the cels used for the animation which makes sense considering this is Digital 2D Animation done on computers and I have a hunch that AMD Threadripper Processors were involved.

But it's the drop shadows that have me really intrigued.

That's because I use drop shadows in my own animations or artwork since I'm a big fan of the old style Acetate Celluloid/acrylic paint style of animation.

Hazbin Hotel is not the only animated show that replicates Cel Drop Shadows with digital tools.

Remember when THE SIMPSONS switched to Digital Ink and Paint in 2002?

They applied filters to the animation to make it look like it was still animated the old school way but still be economical in the production costs.

They eventually dropped that technique in Season 19.

2011's Looney Tunes is another show that does that too.

The HBO Looney Tunes series doesn't have the drop shadows or maybe it does but looking at the screenshots makes it a bit hard for me to tell.

But whatever. What it does make up for it using filters to make it look grainy like actual 35MM film.

It makes me happy that HAZBIN HOTEL uses drop shadows to make it look like physical cels were used even though it's all digital and WACOM CINTIQS were obviously used but grain filter or not, I do encourage more cel drop shadows.

Of course, My art will never ditch grain. With grain, it helps the drop shadows even more so my art looks like it was shot overhead with a PANAFLEX Platinum Camera.

I guess I'd better watch HAZBIN HOTEL when I'm off duty from my job.

Maverick Quickie-I got a new iPhone

Don't have any Maya Tips, Rants, character comparisons, etc. at the ready.

Reason?

I just upgraded from my iPhone 13 to a new iPhone 15 Pro.

That's all I'm going to say. I usually don't use my Maverick Quickies in this super short manner but considering the very first Maverick Quickie I made back in November 8 was centered around my RTX 4080 GPU, it's fitting.

Maya Tips 01-Anime Mouths and how it can be used for your own CGI Lipsyncs

If there's one thing that ANIME does better than it's western counterpart does, that would have to be keeping everything hand-drawn, frame-by-frame.

None of that Puppet-Rigged Bullshit is allowed in anime. With the exception of 3DCG Environments, Everything has to be drawn frame-by-frame by hand (Really a Wacom Cintiq Stylus.)

Of course, I've stated that anime does cut some corners such as make the key-frames more choppier but then again, the choppier the keyframes, the better you handle the acting.

One shortcut that anime uses is whenever the characters talk, the mouths just open and close with barely and vowel animation applied to it unless the production calls for it.

This is a recreation of Misato's "THAT'S A LOAD OF BULL" mouth animation from Evangelion but it still fits the topic on ANIME MOUTH FLAPS.

Why do anime studios do this when animating mouths?

Well it's a holdover from the days of Osamu Tezuka's dominance in the animation scene in Japan. He influenced many an animator in the Japanese animation industry to cut down on the cost of television animation.

But another reason for the mouth flaps just being up and down motions is because the Japanese know their work is going to be dubbed in multiple languages so if the mouth flaps are just the simple up and down motions, then the dialogue will be seamless since the vowels won't dictate what the character should be saying unlike what happens when you take a Disney Movie and dub it into another language.

Of course, sometimes the ADR Studio doesn't get the message and still does what it does.

Remember when Dragon Ball Z was dubbed in English by the Vancouver Studio OCEAN STUDIOS?

Well remember when Brian Drummond said "IT'S OVER 9000!!!"

According to this Dragon Ball Wiki Article:

https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/It's_Over_9000!?so=search

The ADR studio still believed in Vowel matching despite how simplistic the animation of Vegeta's Mouth flaps were but then again, it brought in the famous Meme decades later.

But that does this have to do with CGI?

Well it's a starting technique I use for when I do lip sync animation in MAYA.

I start with setting a virtual camera in MAYA, 

then I position that camera to the face of my rig. I then constrain the camera to the head control of that character rig. 

That's done by selecting the Character's head control

Then selecting the Camera that will go with that character. I actually create multiple cameras so I don't forgo the main one which is for the final renders.

Then I select the constrain tool. The head control of the rig has to be selected first and then the camera.

And that's how I constrain a Camera to the face.

I then select the jaw control that controls the jaw of the character because in real-life, The Jaw (Or mandible) is the dominant player in opening and closing of the mouth.

The jaw animation is dictated by the audio that's used by the scene which I'm working on. I actually have to scrub within the timeline of the project so I can accurately hear what the voice is saying and try to set the keyframe of where the jaw pose goes to.

How do I set a keyframe in MAYA? And that's accomplished by pressing "S" on my keyboard.

Unlike most animators, I don't use keyboards that use rubber domes or scissor switches. 

I'm fiercely a pro-mechanical keyboard type of guy so I need to be accurate to 

what Keyboard I'm using which Currently I'm using is an

EPOMAKER Dynatab75 Retro Red Tactile Switch keyboard.

If you're using a different keyboard, refer to your own board for reference instead of mine unless you have the same model as I do which would be nice.

Back to topic. This is the graph editor in Maya. This is where your keyframes for each control is going to be. It's also where you can edit where the tangents will be.

You can still refer to this graph even if you're using a different program like Blender.

Also, Unlike most animators who might just work on one screen by setting their workspace to animation in MAYA, I actually use my Wacom One Pen Display as my workspace for Maya's Graph Editor since I use a 1080p Monitor so I need all that workspace on my main Monitor so working with the graph editor on a secondary monitor really helps matters.

This is just part 01 of my new series of Posts called MAYA TIPS. I want to provide some knowledge I got from both Lasalle and Self-Teaching myself so I can pass on my knowledge to future animators.

The next part will be about Vowels in mouth animation.

I thought instead of doing a post about me voicing my bias on modern animation, I decided to pass on my animation knowledge to newer animators.

Who knows, Maybe I'll create another blog dedicated to Animation Curriculum.

What can the Third Season of Doug Teach us about Color Theory?

Season 3 of DOUG (Nickelodeon Series that is) is considered my top favorite season of the show. To me, this is where the writing has peaked as well as a shifted color palette to a more higher contrasting palette compared to the purple hue of season 1 and the pastel palette of Season 2.

This higher contrasting palette would eventually carry on to the 4th season as well.

By the time Disney took over the show, the colors became more vibrant but less Contrasting in colors so Seasons 3 and 4 of Nickelodeon's DOUG looks very good to me, even in 480p DVD quality.

So why am I so obsessed with Seasons 3 and 4 of DOUG? Because like I said, better writing, better colors, and Season 4 made Billy West's Doug Voice sound deeper, sort of like a prototype of Fry from Futurama.

But colors is the most important part of this Blogpost. 

Why am I obsessed with High Contrasting Colors?

Because to me, Characters need to stand out when compared to the background art. 
I can't fathom why when I see 2D Animated show, hand drawn or puppet rigged, the people behind those shows always go for a pastel palette. 

I get it's to make things soft and fuzzy for the children but if a show is dictated by the color palette and it has to be soft and gentle, there's not point to be immersed into something where the characters are going to get lost in the background.

Like I said, DOUG's 3rd and 4th Season from the Nick Era has the best color palette there is to offer. The character's color cel paints are more vibrant than the background art which is good thing since it helps them read better which is important because the main focus of a cartoon or anime is a moving character.

Of course, Judging by these Screenshots from the Silver Skeeter episode, the colors looked more like a holdover from the Second Season. I think I may have put in the wrong Disc from my COMPLETE NICKELODEON SERIES DVD when I took these screenshots.

But when done right, You've got characters who read much better and are the focus.

The Colors are still dulled when the title character has his trademark imagination sequences but when that's to be expected.

Roger picking a fight with DOUG's pimples on who gets to order the PANORMOUS Pizza at their local PIZZA HUT.

I don't know about you but I think the mid-90s for animation when done right by the animation studios provided the best palettes in cartoons and Anime.

Here are some screenshots of the best palettes to offer in animation back in the 90s.

Yu Yu Hakusho

Ranma 1/2's OVAs often have a much better color palette than most episodes due to not using the main television production units as well as better drawings than most of it's episodes.

For Disney's Recess, I often prefer the episodes that use Acetate Celluloid instead of digital ink and paint due to a higher contrast of color palettes.

But back to DOUG, The first half of the 3rd Season of the Nick Series had that Pastel Palette that drove me Crazy most of the time

"Don't diss the Pastels Doug!"

But by the time of the Magic Meat episode, Jumbo Pictures decided to change gears with the colors and give us the High Contrasting Colors I so demanded

Just look at how Colorful these Season 3 and Season 4 Screenshots look.

And yes, These are from my Complete Nickelodeon Series DVD because I demand the best quality screenshots without faded colors or infernal watermarks.

Pretty good for a cartoon that strictly uses the old school style of 2D animation which was Xeroxed outlines on acetate cels and acrylic paint.

While the Disney series stuck good to it's promise never to touch Computers for it's animation cels aside from screenwriting, Animatics, and final editorial on AVID, it's clear that something has changed.... actually there were a lot of changes that elicited mixed reactions.

Billy West's salary dispute aside, the major change on Disney's Doug that I have mixed feelings about is the change in the photography process.

The series is really colorful but I still think changing overseas animation houses from HanHo Heung-Up to Mike Judge's PLUS ONE was unnecessary in my part. 

Don't get me wrong, As a DOUG Superfan, I like both series for their merits in the Creator-Driven Animation space but if I were to use DOUG as an example of Color Theory and what palettes to use, I highly recommend the Third Season from the Nickelodeon era.

By the way, the DVDs for the Nick Series are no longer available on Amazon which is where I got my DVD in 2019.

But you can still watch all 52 episodes of Nickelodeon's DOUG on Paramount+. 

As for Disney's DOUG, you can find all 65 episodes on Disney+. So.... yeah.

And how's about a Little Joke:

Doug's reaction to his New Voice after Billy West's salary Dispute

"Good Grief..."

Or even better since the joke's from the Nick Series: 

Porkchop's bias against Roger's New Scream:

"Porkchop does not approve of screaming Rottweilers."

That above Image is pretty funny because Roger's Disney series scream originated from the GUARD DOG episode and it was used for the titular guard dog Lady the Rottweiler. What's more funny is Porkchop's NO NO NO animation coming after that imagination sequence which makes it all the more funny.

And here's the camera recording of said scene. Now you can see in full-motion why I find this imagination sequence transition so funny.

By the way, the name of the Scream that's used for Lady the Rottweiler as well as Roger Klotz's Disney Series Scream is called:

Sound Ideas, SCREAM - FEMALE, SHORT, HUMAN, HORROR 05

and apparently, it was recorded back in 1989 before Doug made his debut on Nickelodeon on August 11 1991.

When I originally wrote this post back in January 2024, It started snowing like crazy in Vancouver. Seems like the weather decided to catch up after El Nino after all.

I guess that means more blogposts as well too and I can guarantee that DOUG may be the focus of it after all. 

I still will rely on my Nick Series DVD for most of my screenshots and I guess for my Disney Series screenshots, it's going to be the DOUG WIKI and my iPhone 15 Pro Camera pointed at front of my ASUS TUF Gaming Monitor screenshots too as I've got no AVERMEDIA capture card and like I said, DISNEY+ disables screen captures so using the Windows App is a no go for my screen captures.

And it seems like Beebe is this close to wanting to smash my Razer Keyboard if I don't stop with this blogpost. You know what, that's a good idea.

And in the off chance that DOUG gets revived, Here's my advice: NO PUPPET RIGS!!!

DOUG's art style may be simplistic but I'm fiercely a strong advocate for old school hand-drawn frame-by-frame animation so If the DOUG revival has to use TOONBOOM HARMONY, I want every frame drawn by hand on WACOM CINTIQS complete with all the onion skin tracing and in-betweens there is to offer.

But what I do want is to replicate the drop shadows you get with acetate cels and fortunately, I've got a screenshot on how to do that:

The Green is the Peg which holds everything together as the master controller.

The (tvg) nodes are the drawings. Then there's the shadow node which generates the drop shadows. 

The bottom nodes are the composites that hold everything together.

And that's how you create drop shadows in TOONBOOM HARMONY.